A FEW YEARS AGO, while looking out at the intramural practise fields of the USAF Academy with Ruth (at left), I wondered where some of my former roommates were. Within a year of snapping a set of photos from the Academy grounds, I'd connected with most of the 16 different men that I met before I snored. A lot of them were findable on Zoomie Nation, some on LinkedIn and a few on Facebook. Most of them follow ZoomieNews, an e-mail newsletter that covers the high points of careers. Sometimes the news would be tragic but until today, none of those news sources delivered details of a death of a roommate.
I knew Rick from age 18. Together, we helped win 72 intercollegiate forensics trophies in a single year. We did better against university debate teams than our football team did on the playing pitch. With impunity, we would miss up to 30% of our academic lectures while traveling west to California and east to New England. Rick was born with academic intelligence. He helped me through some very intense electronic engineering courses, even showing me how to assemble an oscilloscope. He also showed me how to expedite card punches during a foundation course in computer science. In the 70s, you needed card decks to make computers run. Rick's expertise allowed him to be detailed as part of the Mainframe's Fire Watch, where he figured out how to build a modem and how to display directories containing bank records and sensitive academic materials. We didn't talk about those inadvertent discoveries.
I loaned him my Vette for a few weekends after I felt embarassed by his purchase of a Fiat 131. His car's center console corroded from salt spray within two Colorado winters. I visited his hometown of Watertown, Connecticut, where I played basketball with three deaf guys. Rick could sign and that gave him an added advantage on the court. He built a few things with his knowledge of signals, including a modem for personal computing to aid the hard-of-hearing.
Rick Bozzuto was the first Maker I ever knew in the Electronic Age. Two years before personal computers came onto the market, he had assembled one in his Utah home, using parts from a missile command's control room. The thing filled an entire closet and its yellow screen cast an eerie hue when the door swung open. In Rick's memory, I've contacted the Lincoln Akerman School Technology Fund, 8 Exeter Rd, PO Box 40, Hampton Falls NH 03844, about making a donation in his name.
I consider myself fortunate to have chatted with Rick a few times in the month of his death. He wrote, "I am managing a data warehouse and software development group for a health care company in New Hampshire. That and 3 boys out of college (2 married) and a 13 year old girl at home, along with 2 dogs keeps me pretty busy. Hope you are well!" Because we were five time zones and one operating system apart, I didn't hook up with him on Twitter. He tweeted the way he talked. "Are you designing your own circuits? If so, wire-wrapping is easier for prototyping circuits. Not good for production, though."
I'll miss Rick, but will never forget the scope we built and the travel time in weather-beaten T-29s that we enjoyed together.
Boston.com -- Death Notice: Richard C. Bozzuto, born 19 August 1954, died 30 September 2009.
Computer.org -- "Proceedings-Johns Hopkins First National Search for Applications of Personal Computing to AID the Handicapped" includes a citation from Rick Bozzuto.
